(Ver 1.0)  This is now Part 3 of a series of lessons on the Coming Antichrist.  If you have not read this series from the beginning I would highly recommend that you start your reading with “Part 1”.  Everyone who studies the Bible wants to know about the coming antichrist.  Very few Christians have never heard of this soon rising world leader, but few actually know much about him.  While the Bible does not directly tell us who the antichrist is or where he comes from, I believe the Bible gives us enough clues to help identify him, what he will represent and what he will attempt to accomplish in the world.  I’ll start today by saying the term “antichrist” is technically only found in the books of first and second John.  However, this does not mean that other books speak about the same coming individual using different names and titles.  This is a widely popular method utilized by God to conceal the truth in the Bible; call the same thing by many different names, titles, descriptions and symbols.  The term “antichrist” is certainly a valid name found in the Bible so that it cannot be easily explained away by those who do not believe in this man.   The word antichrist can be easily defined as a man with an opposite anointing to Jesus.  Whatever Jesus did, the antichrist will do the opposite.  Since Jesus was the truth, then the antichrist will be the liar.  Since Jesus went around doing good healing people (Acts 10:38), the antichrist will be here to do evil, hurt and kill people.  Take a look at what Jesus did on the earth and then inverse those qualities and actions and this is what the antichrist will be.  So while the name or title antichrist does not appear but in two books directly found in the Bible, there are other names to look for.  For example, Jesus gave us a clue of one called a “false Christ”. 

Mat 24:24  For there shall arise false Christs, and false prophets, and shall shew great signs and wonders; insomuch that, if it were possible, they shall deceive the very elect.

A false Christ is easily defined as anyone that is a deceiver who claims to be a Christ.  We have seen many men in the modern era who have exalted themselves to this level and the end result has widely been the death of many of their followers by self-inflicted or forced suicides.  You can see this in the lives of those who followed David Koresh in Waco and those who followed Jim Jones in Guyana.   It is clear that people will be easily deceived by the right charismatic personality if they do not know or understand the Bible.  To hear the words of one of these men in the early stages of their deception you would have thought they were good men; however the later end was not so good.  This is a standard methodology of deception, to wrap your poison in tasty morsels of steak that are highly desirable.   Any way Jesus gives us a name called a “false Christ” who will come to deceive you in the later times.  Jesus who was the master of signs and wonders informs us that these false Messiahs will also be able to imitate what Jesus did on the earth.  Jesus raised the dead and I would not be shocked to find that Satan can do the same thing when comes into the world.  Perhaps later we will look at scriptures in Revelation that indicates that the antichrist will miraculously recover from a major head wound.  It would almost sound to me that he is raised from the dead back to life from this wound that was inflicted upon him.  It sounds like it could be that miraculous.  What you should realize is that just because someone does something supernatural, does not make them a follower of Christ.  Jesus pretty clearly says that we should not be followers of signs and wonders, only followers of Christ and the Word of God.

So today we will continue our walk through the Bible looking for more of the clues to the coming antichrist.  You may recall in the first two lessons we talked about him being the “man of sin” and the “son of destruction” found in 2 Thessalonians 2:3 and I taught you that I believe this helps to confirm that this will be Satan’s attempt to repeat what God did in the earth through Jesus Christ.   Satan rarely has an original thought, so whatever he does is normally a perversion of something that has already been done in the past by God who has initiated creativity into the world.   I call the antichrist, Satan incarnate.  This is exactly what God did in the man Jesus when He became flesh and walked among us healing people and doing things that were good to all of humanity.   However, the antichrist will not be here to do you any good and we will see this in several scriptures that I will give you today.  I personally believe that Satan is very desperate knowing that his time is growing very short and that he is running out of options to try to save himself from the coming appointed time when he will be cast into hell.  In the second lesson we begin to look at the book of Daniel and how this man is again mentioned in a very negative regard being called a different type of king that will come.  I want to continue today’s lesson by giving you some more scriptures in Daniel that talks about this different king that will arise.  We will begin by looking at Daniel 8:23 first:

Dan 8:23  And in the latter time of their kingdom, when the transgressors are come to the full, a king of fierce countenance, and understanding dark sentences, shall stand up.

A king of fierce countenance and understanding dark sentences shall come forth.  Let’s start by looking at the words “fierce countenance”.  The Hebrew word translated as “fierce” means to be strong, mighty, fierce, greedy and powerful.   These are traits and characteristics of an evil being like Satan.  The Hebrew word translated as “countenance” means the “face” and that is an interesting statement of where his power is located.  You can find over 300 times in the Old Testament that this Hebrew word is directly translated as the word “face”.  In this verse in Daniel the translators seemed to want to translate it as how the face looked and not the direct mention of the meaning of the word.  However, on the face of every human, is an opening called the mouth and this is the external expression device for the internal spirit inside of the body.  In fact if you study your Bible you will see that this is the only way that the internal human spirit can be expressed externally is by your words that come out of your mouth.  So Satan when he is here as a physical man, he will demonstrate fierce power coming from his face or mouth.    You should understand why this is being stated by studying the Bible about the power of spoken words.  I wrote a lesson on “Understanding God’s Spiritual Power and the Power of Spirits” and it might help you to go and read that if you do not understand what I just said about your mouth having spiritual power.

Understanding “dark sentences” is a complex part of the verse to technically explain.  Let’s start by understanding what “dark sentences” are.  According to the Hebrew word’s definition from Strong’s, this word means a riddle, a puzzle, a hard question, a trick, a conundrum,  sententious maxim, a dark sentence, a proverb.  If you do not realize it or not, this is exactly how the Bible was written and describes God’s writing methodology found in the Bible.  God hid a wealth of complex spiritual knowledge in some words that are very difficult to understand for even Christians and for unsaved people entirely impossible to comprehend.  Satan has learned the hard way that he should not have crucified the Lord Jesus Christ on a cross, even though this event was prophesied for hundreds of years before it happened.  Because he did not understand the consequences of killing God on a cross, God tricked Satan into doing it anyway.  Satan has now learned that he better not do something so stupid again, but of course now it’s too late and his fate is sealed.  However, I guarantee you that Satan is studying the Bible and looking for ways out more than most Christians are studying the Bible to find out the truth.  To understand something means that you comprehend the meaning of what is being stated.  There are many Christians who read the Bible occasionally, but few who understand what they just read.  Satan, I believe is bent on understanding the Bible and it says this in this verse in Daniel that he will come forth with great understanding.  This understanding would explain how it is possible for Satan to manifest in a flesh form.  This understanding would also demonstrate how it will be easy to deceive the simple minded people of the world who do not understand the Bible.  We have only gone through one new verse and I wrote two paragraphs of some very important information about the antichrist.  I hope you are grasping these things that I just said.  Let’s look at the next verse found directly after:

Dan 8:24  And his power shall be mighty, but not by his own power: and he shall destroy wonderfully, and shall prosper, and practise, and shall destroy the mighty and the holy people.

Here we again see a reference to him as being a powerful type of individual.  Let’s stop there and reemphasize where the power of a spiritual being resides in a physical world.  You can obviously look at this verse in two different perspectives if you choose to.  First there is physical power and strength we know from the Bible that spirits can give physical being greater natural strength to do amazing feats that are not normally achievable.  You can see this demonstrated in the life of Sampson in the Old Testament and you can also see it in the opposite evil way when Jesus cast out evil spirits from a man in the country of Gadarenes in Mark 5:1.  In this story it says that people could not even bind this demon possessed man with chains, because he was able to break them.  Both of these examples are obviously supernatural examples of spiritual power being displayed on the earth.  Is this the power that the antichrist will exhibit?   While I do not discount that it is possible, I believe the spiritual power coming from the antichrist’s mouth will cause much greater devastation and harm.  Did you notice what this verse said?  It said that his power shall be mighty but not by his own power.  That is a perplexing statement, isn’t it?  It sounds like a riddle to me?  How can a man be strong but not use his own strength?  To me it only makes sense if you change from a physical perspective and see it from a spiritual perspective.  The physical man’s ability will not come from his physical body is what I believe this is trying to tell us.  I believe that this antichrist’s power will come from his spirit and his mouth.   Again I’ll make references to Satan doing what Jesus does and Jesus is described as the man with the sword coming out of His mouth in Revelation 1:16, 2:12, 2:16 and 19:15-21.  You can clearly see that Jesus’ power is said to be in His mouth as a symbolic double edged sword in these verses.  So again if Satan has learned and understands the Bible and where his power is, then he will also imitate whatever Jesus will come and do also.    Let’s look at another verse in Revelation about this coming antichrist:

Rev 13:5  And there was given unto him a mouth speaking great things and blasphemies; and power was given unto him to continue forty and two months.

Hopefully you know that the tribulation period is scheduled to be a period of 7 years on the earth.  This period is described as being a week of years.  If you multiply 7 years by 12 (months) you get 84 months of total time.  We can clearly see that for 42 of these months or half of the entire duration of the tribulation, a man will come forth with great demonstrations of power in his mouth.  Here in this verse you can see that there is an indirect mention of the antichrist.  If you read the context of the chapter you know that this chapter corresponds to some verses that we can find in Daniel about the beast with ten horns.  What we see in this chapter is the same basic information being restated from a different perspective.  So chapter 13 of Revelation is definitely related to the vision found in the book of Daniel of the beasts and the antichrist.  The main reason I wanted to give you this verse is to demonstrate a couple of important things that I said about the earlier verses in Daniel.  Here we have several key words being reiterated.  We have “power” and we have the direct mention of a “mouth” that speaks.  Wow, that is too amazing to be a coincidence.  This again shows us or at the least implies that this man is an incarnate Satan who has power to speak words to cause harm and deception.  The occurrence of mouth and power in the same verse is not there by chance.   I also believe that because 42 months is mentioned here that the antichrist will use the first three and half years of the tribulation to rise to power with his promises of peace.  Then when he comes into his full power I believe that he will use his new position of authority to try to destroy that peace. 

The subject of the antichrist and the tribulation is a vastly complex subject and I do not profess to know it all right now.  I’m learning stuff new every day that I study this subject.  This is the way it works.  You learn what you can and you continue to build upon it until you get it all done, if that is even possible.  I have found that God’s knowledge of His Word is pretty inexhaustible.  Just when you think you understand everything about a single verse, God can show you something new and sometimes this new information changes everything that you thought before, but most of the time it only adds to what you know.   I think for today I’ll end this lesson and continue again on it in the future.  Here are some of the names of the antichrist that we have seen so far:

1.  Man of Sin (2 Thes 2:3)
2. Son of Perdition (2 Thes 2:3)
3. A King (Daniel 8:23)
4. Antichrist (1 Jo 2:18)
5. False Christ (Mat 24:24)
6. Destroyer (Daniel 8:24)
7. Deceiver (Mat 24:24, 2 Jo 1:7)
8. Supernatural Miracle Worker (Mat 24:24, 2 Th 2:9)
9. Blasphemer (Rev 13:5)
10. Murderer (Dan 8:24)

I know some of my titles are not directly found in these verses, but are derived from a logical association of what is stated in those verses.  I tried to take the verbs and adjectives given to us in these verses and change them into nouns to describe this individual, so do not criticize; just learn what they say and then use your brain like I try to do.  Hopefully we will continue in this study in my next lesson, but sometimes the Lord leads me to write about other things also to try to remain in a balanced state of teaching the Bible.  If you have information about the antichrist that I do not have or have not covered I would welcome your comments and Bible information.  So until next time God Bless you.

If you would like to continue reading in this series of lessons on the antichrist you may now go to “Part 4“.